FOOTNOTES
[53] Few people have ever heard of the attempt to found a Platonopolis in Italy in the Renaissance times.
[54] Of course, he saw and admitted these defects; but it is obvious that he thought them only defects of detail, which could be remedied by better arrangement; whereas the Athenian democracy appeared to him radically unsound. And yet could Sparta ever have produced such a splendid passage of history as the conduct of the Athenian army at Samos when the news came (411 B.C.) that the constitution of their city had been overthrown and an oligarchy established? Let the reader consult Grote’s chapter on this.
[55] Plato even insists upon a fixed number, 11,080 men and the same number of women, all excess being guarded against either by exposing of infants or transporting adults into colonies.
[56] The critics have shown that Plato gradually softened his recommendations on this point. In the “Timæus” he speaks as if he had never recommended exposal, but only a relegation of the children of unhealthy parents into his third grade of society. In the “Laws” (if it be, indeed, his work) he lets the whole matter drop, though it was to be expected that he should discuss it. Whether this arose from a gradual advance of humanity in Plato himself, or from the adverse criticism of the day, we cannot tell. The German critics (Zeller, Susemihl, etc.) hold the former; I am disposed to the latter, even though his successor, Aristotle, as they remark, is even more inhuman.
[57] This is in the “Laws,” of which the genuineness is not without doubt.
[58] vii. 2.
[59] viii. 5, §§ 3–10: Περὶ δὲ μουσικῆς ἔνια μὲν διηπορήκαμεν τῷ λόγῳ καὶ πρότερον, καλῶς δ’ ἔχει καὶ νῦν ἀναλαβόντας αὐτὰ προαγαγεῖν, ἵνα ὥσπερ ἐνδόσιμον γένηται τοῖς λόγοις, οὓς ἄν τις εἴποι ἀποφαινόμενος περὶ αὐτῆς. Οὔτε γὰρ τίνα ἔχει δύναμιν, ῥᾴδιον περὶ αὐτῆς διελεῖν, οὔτε τίνος δεῖ χάριν μετέχειν αὐτῆς, πότερον παιδιᾶς ἕνεκα καὶ ἀναπαύσεως, καθάπερ ὕπνου καὶ μέθης· ταῦτα γὰρ καθ’ αὑτὰ μὲν οὔτε τῶν σπουδαίων, ἀλλ’ ἡδέα καὶ ἅμα παύει μέριμναν, ὥς φησιν Εὐριπίδης· διὸ καὶ τάττουσιν αὐτὴν καὶ χρῶνται πᾶσι τούτοις ὁμοίως οἴνῳ καὶ μέθῃ καὶ μουσικῇ· τιθέασι δὲ καὶ τὴν ὄρχησιν ἐν τούτοις. Ἢ μᾶλλον οἰητέον πρὸς ἀρετήν τι τείνειν τὴν μουσικὴν, ὡς δυναμένην, καθάπερ ἡ γυμναστικὴ τὸ σῶμα ποιόν τι παρασκευάζει, καὶ τὴν μουσικὴν τὸ ἦθος ποιόν τι ποιεῖν, ἐθίζουσαν δύνασθαι χαίρειν ὀρθῶς· ἢ πρὸς διαγωγήν τι συμβάλλεται καὶ πρὸς φρόνησιν; καὶ γὰρ τοῦτο τρίτον θετέον τῶν εἰρημένων. Ὅτι μὲν οὖν δεῖ τοὺς νέους μὴ παιδιᾶς ἕνεκα παιδεύειν, οὐκ ἄδηλον· οὐ γὰρ παίζουσι μανθάνοντες· μετὰ λύπης γὰρ ἡ μάθησις· ἀλλὰ μὴν οὐδὲ διαγωγήν τε παισὶν ἁρμόττει καὶ ταῖς ἡλικίαις ἀποδιδόναι ταῖς τοιαύταις· οὐθενὶ γὰρ ἀτελεῖ προσήκει τέλος. Ἀλλ’ ἴσως ἂν δόξειεν ἡ τῶν παίδων σπουδὴ παιδιᾶς εἶναι χάριν ἀνδράσι γενομένοις καὶ τελειωθεῖσιν. Ἀλλ’ εἰ τοῦτ’ ἐστὶ τοιοῦτον, τίνος ἂν ἕνεκα δέοι μανθάνειν αὐτοὺς, ἀλλὰ μὴ, καθάπερ οἱ τῶν Περσῶν καὶ Μήδων βασιλεῖς, δι’ ἄλλων αὐτὸ ποιούντων μεταλαμβάνειν τῆς ἡδονῆς καὶ τῆς μαθήσεως; καὶ γὰρ ἀναγκαῖον βέλτιον ἀπεργάζεσθαι τοὺς αὐτὸ τοῦτο πεποιημένους ἔργον καὶ τέχνην τῶν τοσοῦτον χρόνον ἐπιμελουμένων, ὅσον πρὸς μάθησιν μόνον. Εἰ δὲ δεῖ τὰ τοιαῦτα διαπονεῖν αὐτοὺς, καὶ περὶ τὴν τῶν ὄψων πραγματείαν αὐτοὺς ἂν δέοι παρασκευάζειν· ἀλλ’ ἄτοπον. Τὴν δ’ αὐτὴν ἀπορίαν ἔχει καὶ εἰ δύναται τὰ ἤθη βελτίω ποιεῖν· ταῦτα γὰρ τί δεῖ μανθάνειν αὐτοὺς ἀλλ’ οὐχ ἑτέρων ἀκούοντας ὀρθῶς τε χαίρειν καὶ δύνασθαι κρίνειν; ὥσπερ οἱ Λάκωνες· ἐκεῖνοι γὰρ οὐ μανθάνοντες ὅμως δύνανται κρίνειν ὀρθῶς, ὥς φασι, τὰ χρηστὰ καὶ τὰ μὴ χρηστὰ τῶν μελῶν. Ὁ δ’ αὐτὸς λόγος κἂν εἰ πρὸς εὐημερίαν, καὶ διαγωγὴν ἐλευθέριον χρηστέον αὐτῇ· τί γὰρ δεῖ μανθάνειν αὐτοὺς, ἀλλ’ οὐχ ἑτέρων χρωμένων ἀπολαύειν; Σκοπεῖν δ’ ἔξεστι τὴν ὑπόληψιν ἣν ἔχομεν περὶ τῶν θεῶν·
οὐ [δὲ] γὰρ ὁ Ζεὺς αὐτὸς ἀείδει καὶ κιθαρίζει
τοῖς ποιηταῖς· ἀλλὰ καὶ βαναύσους καλοῦμεν τοὺς τοιούτους, καὶ τὸ πράττειν οὐκ ἀνδρὸς μὴ μεθύοντος ἢ παίζοντος.
[60] The second chapter of his first book gives a general description of the education among the Persians, which is, of course, a fancy sketch, accommodated to his own theories.
CHAPTER XI.
THE GROWTH OF SYSTEMATIC HIGHER EDUCATION.—UNIVERSITY LIFE AT ATHENS.
§ 70. It has been stated in the foregoing chapters that during the earlier or strictly classical period the Greeks never thought of endowing or regulating higher education. The careful system of training at Sparta, promoted and controlled by the State, hardly included even primary education. The police regulations alluded to at Athens only concerned details of management in private schools, and only primary schools, which were worked by masters self-appointed and supported by the demand for them or their popularity in their district. Nowhere do we find anything approaching to a State endowment or regulation of university education. In fact, the want of such higher education was only felt when the Greek mind began to turn inwards upon itself after its extraordinary expansion in the Persian wars. And then the first want was supplied by voluntary efforts—by the Sophists who wandered from town to town, citizens of no fixed State, teachers in complete independence of all State direction. Indeed, their avoidance of political duties and responsibilities often brought them into suspicion, oftener into contempt.
Socrates and Plato brought against them two other objections—the one serious and capital, the other trivial and absurd; and yet it was the latter which told with the public. The former objection was that of superficiality and boastful assumption; they professed, within a short time, to teach all that was needful in science and literature, in philosophy and politics. And here the deeper thinking of professed philosophers superseded them, though they had not been either useless or contemptible in their day. The second objection reminds us strongly of the prejudice once felt against taking interest for money—all such profit being regarded as usury in the worst sense of the term. It was urged that the Sophists asked and received pay for spreading the truth, and for teaching what every honest man ought to communicate (if he were able) for nothing. But although it was all very well for the eccentric and exceptional Socrates, for the wealthy Plato, to refuse all remuneration, the theory that the Sophist was not a laborer worthy of his hire asserted that all higher education must be carried on by amateurs, and thus tended to destroy all systematic and widely diffused culture.
§ 71. This narrow prejudice, therefore, did not resist the common-sense of the public when brought to bear upon it. We are assured that Plato, like Socrates, took no payment. Our authorities are silent about Aristotle, and it is hence inferred that he followed the same rule. But Speusippus, his successor in the school, is said to have demanded regular fees. This had been the practice with all the rhetoricians who taught young men after their emancipation from school, and who followed the natural precedent of the Sophists. Such a practice was all the more reasonable, as the pupils in philosophical schools, even in Plato’s, were divided into amateur pupils, who came for mere general training, and professional students, who meant to take up teaching for their livelihood, and who spent a long time in special studies. Thus pupils’ fees were always a possible, and became an actual, endowment for higher teaching. In the Sophists’ days men complained that these fees were exorbitant, though perhaps not with justice. In later days we hear of large fees from rich pupils, but always as voluntary donations, and for the purpose of relieving poorer fellow-students. For the schools of philosophy began to be secured from difficulties by a second means of endowment—the donations of patrons and the bequests of pious founders. As regards these donations by rich pupils, we hear from Philostratus[61] that a rich scholar, Damianus, gave to each of the Sophists Aristeides and Adrianos 10,000 drachmæ, to supply poor students with free lectures. This gift, about £400 of our money, represents a far larger sum in relation to the then existing conditions of wealth. One hundred drachmæ were probably considered an adequate fee for a complete course; and if it be true that a popular teacher could often command one hundred pupils, even though the course occupied more than one year, the endowment was considerable.
The desire of procuring free education for poorer lads with literary tastes is, however, an interesting and permanent feature in the Greek mind. At the present moment the University of Athens provides free education for every Greek, and is wholly supported by a State subsidy. This now unique provision brings to Athens an influx of young Greeks from all the Levant, from Turkish countries, from Egypt—nay, even from Italy. They support themselves as best they can, often by menial employments, provided they can keep their lecture hours free. Lodging together in the humblest apartments, they club their scanty earnings for the purchase of a light and a text-book, which they use in common, the one sleeping till his fellow has done his work, and wakes him to hand him the fresh-trimmed lamp and well-worn manual.
This state of things, which reminds us so strongly of the mediæval universities, and is inestimably honorable to a growing age of culture when the masses want leavening, may be driven to a dangerous excess when the educated classes become too numerous; for it dissuades every ambitious young man from agriculture and the commercial pursuits so necessary to a nation’s welfare. And as this is the case in Greece now, so it was doubtless the case when, in the days of Hellenism, Athens offered philosophy at so cheap a rate to all the Greek-speaking world. The class of learned idlers who would not pursue any mercantile calling increased throughout Greece.[62] Although, therefore, the condition of things at Oxford and Cambridge—which, in addition to their vast endowments, demands a heavy outlay from their alumni—is not to be defended, there is an opposite error, and one likely to do more mischief: it is the setting-up of the lower classes to seek university degrees with a minimum of expense and trouble, and consequently a minimum of culture. This mistaken course, which now threatens the Irish people, in addition to all their other misfortunes, tends strongly to increase (as is the case in modern Greece) a dangerous class of social and political malcontents, who consider that their high education is not recognized, and that they have no scope for their literary or political talents.[63]
§ 72. We turn to the endowments by bequest, which were the direct cause of the establishment of philosophical schools at Athens. This idea seems due to Plato, who acquired for his school a local habitation as well as a name. It is well known that from early times there were two gymnasia (in the Greek sense) provided for the youth who had finished their schooling—that in the groves of the suburb called after the hero Academus, and that called the Kynosarges, near Mount Lycabettus. The latter was specially open to the sons of citizens by foreign wives. Thirdly, in Pericles’ day was established the Lykeion, near the river Ilisos. They were all provided with water, shady walks and gardens, and were once among the main beauties of Athens and its neighborhood.
The Academy became so identified with Plato’s teaching that his pupils Antisthenes (the Cynic) and Aristotle settled beside or in the Kynosarges and Lykeion respectively, and were known by their locality till the pupils of Antisthenes removed to the frescoed portico (stoa) in Athens, and were thence called Stoics. Epicurus taught in his own garden in Athens. All these settlements were copied from Plato’s idea. He apparently taught both in the public gymnasium and in a private possession close beside it; and in his will, preserved by Diogenes Laertius, he bequeaths his two pieces of land to Speusippus, thus designating him as his formal successor. His practice being followed, the title scholarch soon grew up for the head of the school, and the owner of a life interest in the διατριβή or locality devoted to the purpose. Each master was called the successor (διάδοχος) of his predecessor, and the succession of these heads of schools has been traced with more or less success all through the Hellenistic period.
§ 73. This is, no doubt, the cause of the fixed and traditional character of the philosophical schools at Athens, and one main reason why this city became in the Roman Empire, when original research had died out, the principal university of the old world. The successive scholarchs seem to have thought of nothing but the repeating and expounding of the founder’s views; and it is mentioned as a special loss to the Peripatetic school that Aristotle’s works were left away from the school, and travelled into the possession of Neleus to Scepsis in the Troad. Hence the scholarchs, instead of developing a new doctrine, were simply helpless, and only taught what they could remember, or what had been preserved by fragments in the note-books of the school. The proper investment of the school property was also the scholarch’s duty, and we hear that in the fourth century A.D., under Proclus, the Platonic endowment was worth more than one thousand pieces of gold annually. Suidas tells us[64] “that from time to time pious patrons of learning bequeathed in their wills to the adherents of the school the means of living a life of philosophic leisure.” This is very analogous to the bequests of pious founders in the Middle Ages, especially of those who had the far-seeing wisdom to free their endowments from the penalty of teaching—a humane and enlightened intention, now frustrated by the rage for turning universities into mere training establishments.
The designating of a successor by will, or shortly before the scholarch’s death, became the rule in the principal schools of rhetoric, except that at Athens election by the school came to take its place. So far as we know, this was first suggested by Lycon, Aristotle’s third successor, if not by Theophrastus. But the will of Lycon, preserved by Diogenes, is express: “I bequeath the peripatos to my pupils Bulon, Kallinos, etc., without condition. Let them appoint whomsoever they think will be most zealous and best keep together the school. May the rest of the school stand by him, for my sake and that of the place.” These words not only imply that there was a staff of assistants, selected from favorite pupils who intended to make philosophy their profession, but is peculiarly interesting as naturally suggesting a competitive examination, without naming it, as the method of choice. In Lucian’s “Eunuch,” the appointment is described as an election by votes of the chief men, after an examination of the candidate in his knowledge of, and faith in, the system. There were cases when the electing body was not the school, but the Areopagus, or the council; for the hatred and jealousy of the schools made an election from without safer. When the chief literary posts at Athens became salaried by the State, such interference was natural, and disputed elections were even referred to the emperor at Rome.
§ 74. Eunapius tells us of an interesting dispute of this kind for the office of Sophist (the highest literary post at Athens) on the death of Julianus, 340 A.D., and its consequent vacation. Six candidates—four of them pupils of Julianus, and two other needy persons—were selected by common consent; the Roman proconsul was president of the electing court, and so violent was the canvassing that he was obliged to interfere and order people out of Athens. The candidates handed in essays and made set speeches. There were claqueurs ready with their prepared applause. Then the proconsul again cited them, and gave them a theme for an extempore speech. Five refused, saying they were not accustomed to pour out, but to think out, their orations. Prohæresius, a pupil of Julianus, alone took up the challenge, and, all applause being interdicted, maintained his reputation splendidly. Nevertheless, he did not then obtain the chair; for his opponents secured influential electors with dinners and presents, and, no doubt, the social talents of a Sophist in this chair were very important. They took shameful ways of succeeding; “but, indeed,” says Eunapius, “you can hardly blame them for working their case as best they could.”
This interesting story belongs to later days, when the chairs of philosophy and rhetoric at Athens came under State support and control. In early days, up to the Christian era, the schools were perfectly private, free, and independent of the State. We hear, indeed, of such decrees as that of the Thirty Tyrants forbidding rhetoric and philosophy to be taught. But though any ancient state, even a free democracy, would have thought itself quite justified in such interference for public reasons, there is no definite attempt at such a policy till the days of Theophrastus, when (about 316 B.C.) Sophocles, son of Amphicleides of Sunium, passed a law that no one should open a school of philosophy without the approval of the senate and people. There was a formal exodus of philosophic students, who only returned with Theophrastus, when Sophocles was convicted under the law against illegal procedure (γραφὴ παρανόμων), and his law repealed. This attempt of Sophocles might have been defended from Plato’s “Republic” and “Laws,” where the philosopher distinctly recommends State control of education. But it was, no doubt, the antidemocratic tone of the schools, especially of the Platonic school, which prompted this action, for we hear that Demosthenes’ nephew, Demochares, and other democratic leaders, supported Sophocles, on the special ground that Plato’s school had supplied most of the later tyrants to Greece.
The true way of controlling education had not yet dawned upon the public men of Athens—the endowing of chairs, with a power of removal. We hear, indeed, gradually of small salaries for sophronistæ and other guardians of youth, but direct State patronage of teachers first meets us among the Egyptian and Pergamene successors of Alexander. Then the Roman emperors, as we shall presently see, appointed regular professors. But all this took the form of honoring a great teacher, as states honored him with civic freedom, immunity from taxes, bronze statues, and the like. His special teaching was not criticised or directed from without.
§ 75. The time came, however, when more than formal or irregular honors were paid to the teaching profession. The Roman emperors established chairs (θρόνοι) of theoretical and practical rhetoric, and of the four sects of philosophy, the former of which they endowed with 10,000 drachmæ per annum each. The highest chair was entitled the Sophist’s chair, that term having, after all, maintained its old respectability, and recovered from the obloquy thrown upon it by Socrates and Plato. There was even a subdivision of the Sophist’s chair, a second chair being called the political chair. These appointments seem to have been the device of Hadrian, though L. Egnatius Lollianus of Ephesus was the first salaried occupant of the chair, and was appointed under Antoninus Pius. The same policy, carried out by Marcus Aurelius, gave immunity from taxes and civic duties to all the learned professions—physicians, philosophers, rhetoricians, and grammarians. Then the term δημοσιεύειν (to be a public servant), once applied to a public hangman or a dispensary doctor, now came to mean a public and salaried professor.
The salaries were paid in kind—five Roman modii of wheat per month—and were thus free from the great fluctuations in money values common in those days. The pupils’ fees were paid in money, and were due on January 1; but we hear many complaints of irregularity in this respect. This was mainly caused by the ambition of the rival teachers to have their class-rooms filled, and hence their indulgence in the case of the poor and the procrastinating, who could not or would not pay, and were nevertheless permitted to continue their studies. One hundred drachmæ paid down seem to have been thought an average fee; but great variations were allowed, and there was evidently no tariff, or any such credentials as our parchments to show that a man had attended his course, paid his fees regularly, and obtained what we call a degree. Libanius mentions an amusing case of a man sending with his son to Athens a donkey, by the sale of which the fees were to be paid. No doubt, the profits made by the greater chairs were considerable, and the sophist and rhetor, with their higher colleagues, represented Athens on state occasions as civic dignitaries. They were expected to go out to meet any very distinguished visitor, and address him with complimentary harangues; they had to present themselves officially every month to the proconsul at Corinth, presumably to report on the state of Athens. We hear that they obtained leave of absence only by special permission and with difficulty. In contrast to this importance and splendor, we have a pitiable account in Libanius of the miseries of the rhetors at Antioch, who strove to keep up a respectable appearance while they were persecuted with duns and creditors, and almost starved at home.
§ 76. A great deal of obscurity still remains, not only concerning the exact number of salaried professors of sophistic and rhetoric, but concerning their relations to the crowd of assistants, recognized and unrecognized, which must have existed at the University of Athens. So clear was the policy of Hadrian, and still more of M. Aurelius, to make it the main seat of the world’s learning, that all manner of students went thither to enjoy the various privileges offered. The grand man, the Sophist, could not be expected to do tutor’s or coaching work; and as many lads came from the far East and West with little training, there must have been a considerable class of private teachers to help them on. This was also done by the lad’s pædagogue, who came with him from home. But there appears to have been a licensed class of secondary professors, the Privat-Docenten of the Germans, who enjoyed no salary, but lived on the fees of pupils. It is not likely that the total number of these licensed lecturers in sophistic and rhetoric exceeded eight or ten; the private tutors were probably very numerous.
We naturally inquire how this State appointment to professorial chairs was consistent with the succession already described in the four philosophical schools. In these there was no formal change; they were elected by a committee of recognized heads of each school. But gradually the influence of the emperor made itself felt. The procurator, who came from Corinth to look after such matters, either influenced the nomination of the committee, or recommended the election of a particular candidate. Even in the case of the public chairs there was sometimes a competition, and often the emperor did not interfere with his lieutenant’s arrangements. Herodes Atticus was almost omnipotent in his day in these appointments. Dismissals from the public chairs were very unusual, but distinctly asserted as the emperor’s right. The Prohæresius above mentioned was dismissed by the Emperor Julian, because he appeared to be a Christian.
§ 77. It is more interesting to turn to the peculiarities of life which bound together the young men at the University of Athens, and the various customs which then, as now, gave a peculiar tone to the student’s life. What is called the atmosphere of Oxford or Cambridge, of Dublin or Harvard, consists in a body of traditional customs maintained by the peculiar conservatism of youth, which moulds every new-comer, and produces a certain type of character, and even a certain fixity of manners. It seems probable that the earliest Italian universities in the Middle Ages, which go back to the eleventh or twelfth century, acquired some of these traditions from the Greek universities of the decadence, and thus a direct filiation may be traced between the customs now to be described, as existing at Athens in the Hellenistic period, and those of modern Europe. But to investigate this obscure subject thoroughly would lead us far beyond our present limits.
We hear that no one was allowed to attend lectures, at least in the fourth century A.D., without dressing in the scholar’s short cloak (τρίβων)—in fact, our college gown; and the right of wearing it was only obtained by leave of the Sophist. This in itself was a mark probably more universal than the gowns at Oxford and Cambridge, for we have no evidence that Greek gentlemen, like the modern English, hated all official costumes.[65]
There was no arrangement for a daily commons of students; there were no college buildings, and the students lodged where they could, as they do in the foreign universities, such as Göttingen or Leyden. But there were special dining societies in each of the four philosophic schools, meeting once a month or oftener, for which funds were bequeathed, and which were regarded as a special bond of union. Of course, simple fare and philosophical conversation was the original plan: it degenerated into luxury and sumptuous feasting; for the dinners given by Lycon, when head of the Peripatetic school, lasted till the following morning. He entertained twenty at a time for the nominal fee of nine obols, which was even remitted to poor scholars. This took place on the last day of the month. Epicurus, in his will, made special provision for a feast every twentieth of the month. The Stoics had three such clubs, called after scholarchs who probably were the founders. The intention of these feasts, which were more like Oxford gaudies than ordinary commons, was to bring masters and pupils into closer relation, and this is found a true plan in all modern society. People seldom become intimate who do not dine together.
At Athens, too, there was no official tutorial discipline;[66] there were no compulsory chapels, or lectures, or fines; and order seems to have been kept by the very republican arrangement of a senior prefect (ἄρχων), elected by the class every ten days. We are told that the professor, besides remonstrance, sometimes struck idle or stupid scholars; and Libanius talks of being “sent down” as a terrible disgrace, involving serious consequences to the lad’s parents, and even to his native town. Perhaps it may correspond to expulsion from our universities; but this must have been for the gravest crimes only. The pupils of any professor were merely known as his circle (οἱ ἀπό, or περί, τινος); they were only his pupils or hearers in that they attended his lectures. Indeed, they often designated him by a nickname public enough to have been transmitted in after-literature.
§ 78. We find an unusual variety of terms,[67] all transferred from other combinations, to express the clubs or unions of students among themselves, and they are constantly mentioned in books and inscriptions of the second and third centuries A.D. They naturally grew out of the old separation of the ephebi into a separate class long before university education was organized, or rather crystallized, into the shape we are now discussing. The presidents of these clubs were called choregi (also κορυφαῖοι and ἀκρωμῖται). Inscriptions tell us of similar private combinations among the ephebi in the second century A.D., in which names from the general lists are repeated under the separate heads of Heracleids and Theseids, two associations to be compared with the students’ clubs at the Italian and German universities, which often bear the names of nations, thus pointing to their mediæval origin. There is evidence of some peculiar importance, possibly of rivalry, as regards the Theseids and Heracleids at Athens, and the German critics are probably right in suspecting a political bias to have been the true ground of difference. The constant relations of Heracles and Theseus in the legends and the religion of Attica are well known; the Temple of Theseus, still standing at Athens, is by many considered a Heracleion, and the deeds of Heracles are more conspicuously celebrated than those of Theseus in its sculptured reliefs. Theseus was certainly raised by Attic legends into the position of founder of the democracy, and the ideal of an ephebus, and as such he may have been contrasted to Heracles, who was the ancestor of Doric nobility, and might be regarded as of aristocratic tendency. This conjecture has the merit of probability, though it has no basis beyond these general grounds.
§ 79. When we come to later days, especially to the fourth century A.D., we hear much about the students’ clubs from Philostratus, Eunapius, Libanius, and others. It is remarkable that they were not then formed on the national basis, as we may conceive the older Heracleids to have been Bœotian youths, severed from the Attic Theseids, or as we could conceive Irish students associating themselves in an English university. They were rather suggested by the rivalries of their teachers, originally of the separate philosophic schools, but afterwards merely formed on the grounds of ambition and popularity. A crowded attendance at lectures was so anxiously desired that every kind of device was used by the rival professors to induce students to come to them. This evil became so apparent in its effects upon the students, who were flattered and courted by their masters, that Libanius mentions a proposed agreement (συνθήκη) between the professors on the question, which was, however, unsuccessful. Thus in the older University of Dublin the profits of college tutors were so great that a similar rivalry in popularity existed, and the dons are said to have studied unworthy arts to secure a full chamber. Such canvassing has almost disappeared since the treaty, as Libanius calls it, of putting the pupils’ fees into a common fund, of which the greater part is divided according to the tutor’s standing, and only a small premium is allowed for the actual number of pupils.
The constant jealousies and factions occasioned by this competition among professors were reproduced in the Italian universities of the Renaissance period; indeed, all through the Middle Ages. Thus, according to Eunapius, the president of the club called Σπάρτη ἄτακτος considered it part of his duty to bring his club in full force, and well armed, to the Peiræus, or even down to Sunium, in order to catch students coming from the East, green and fresh, and secure them for the professor he patronized. Rival clubs met on these errands, and had pitched battles worse than those of town and gown in England. Every attempt was made to secure lads, even before they left their homes. Libanius tells us he came to Athens, having been already canvassed at his home in Antioch to attend the rhetor Aristodemus, but was seized by a club in the interest of Diophantus, and only let free with great difficulty, and after he had sworn allegiance to Diophantus. We hear of every sort of violence being committed by these students, in whose disputes the Roman governor at Corinth was sometimes obliged to interfere. We hear of their debts and their poverty, their dissoluteness and idleness. But, of course, the diligent and orderly minority have left no trace behind, and we must take care to give no exaggerated weight to the noisy doings of the baser sort. Even tossing in a blanket (or carpet) was well known to them,[68] and applied to unpopular teachers, probably of the obscurer sort, as may be seen from Libanius’s oration On the Carpet, in which he lectures them on the subject. We do not hear of any scholarships, bursaries, or exhibitions intended to help indigent lads of ability. Indeed, this giving a lad money rewards for educating himself seems a very evil device of modern times. To support a student with the bare necessaries of life, and give him free instruction, is a different thing, and this was the idea of the pious founders of scholarships. To repay him in part for an extravagant preparation by extravagant prizes is a very different notion, but now so diffused that its absurdity no longer strikes the public mind in England.
§ 80. Gregory the Nazianzen tells us of comic ceremonies by which the freshman was initiated to his studies, and these practices were technically called τελεταί, or initiatory rites. These are to be compared to the teasing of beginners known at the German universities under the name of deposition. At Athens the novice was brought by a band to the baths through the market-place. Then those in front began to push him back, and refuse to let him in, while those behind thrust him forward. After a rude struggle, probably intended to try his temper, he was let in, bathed, and thus formally admitted, receiving his tribon, or college gown. There was also some unknown ceremony in the theatre, called κυλίστραι, of which the name only is preserved, from its being forbidden by law in 693 A.D., and this by a Church synod in Constantinople. It was identified with other heathen practices and traditions, and hence considered worthy of being threatened with excommunication. These late occurrences of student practices give rise to the suspicion that they may have been copied in the early school of Bologna. Perhaps the most curious allusion[69] is to the fact that, after a certain standing, students were by common consent excused from these follies, as now in Germany a graduate at Leipzig or Göttingen, or a professor, would no more think of fighting a student’s duel than an English gentleman would; while every younger man is compelled to do so by an iron custom amounting to the most absolute tyranny.
The example of the Stoics, who taught in the city, was followed by other schools, after that the successive devastations of the neighborhood of Athens by Philip V. of Macedon (200 B.C.), and by Sulla, had injured the gardens and groves of both Kynosarges, Academy, and Lykeion. We hear of the Ptolemeion and Diogeneion as the fashionable places of resort, then Hadrian’s gymnasium—all within the town, and all the gift of individual founders—the Diogenes in question being a condottiere who commanded the second King Demetrius’s troops in Attica, 225 B.C. There is some slight evidence that this man’s gymnasium was used for beginners, and possibly they may even have resided there; for we hear that scholars often set up huts (καλύβια) near the house of their favorite teachers. There were libraries in connection with Ptolemy’s and Hadrian’s gymnasia. Indeed, it seems, in later days, that such was the danger of a riot if professors lectured in any public building, that they built private theatres for themselves, attached to their own houses, and elegantly appointed. In these we may be sure that their teaching took the form of a lecture, not of disputation or of catechising. This latter kind of lesson was very popular in Socrates and Plato’s time; but Aristotle already severed it from his regular discourses, and held his philosophic conversations with his pupils walking in the Peripatos: hence the title of his school.
§ 81. We only know now the names of those professors who lived for the world and for posterity, and strove to teach by publishing their works. In an age when originality was dead, and the highest ability consisted in the best commentary on Plato and Aristotle, this literary activity, once admired and praised, seems to us, for the most part, idle subtlety. Even in rhetoric all the laws and models were fixed; Longinus only shows us a modern and æsthetic appreciation of beauty in style, which we do not find in earlier rhetors. But, of all the scholarchs at Athens, none are now of the least consideration save the heads of the Neo-Platonic school; and even these were but followers of this strange, fascinating doctrine, already preached in Alexandria and in Rome, which strove to give a new meaning to the metaphysic of the Academy, and accommodate it to the spiritual wants of earnest heathen, in the face of Christianity.
But it is more than probable that, as in our own universities, so at Athens, the best and most earnest of the teachers set themselves so exclusively to their task that they left nothing behind them except in the note-books of their classes. This sort of university teacher never earns any wider popularity than that of his college; and yet there, and among those who have known his diligence, his patience, and his power, he will always rank far higher than those who rush before the public from ambition, often with badly digested ideas. We shall, therefore, do well not to set down the philosophical teaching at Athens at the level of those tedious commentaries which the student will find collected in the later volumes[70] of Mullach’s “Fragmenta Philosophorum Græcorum.”
§ 82. As regards the length of the course which the students were expected to attend, there are very varying statements. Five to eight years are mentioned, a period far too long for young gentlemen like Cicero’s nephews, and probably only meant to apply to those who went for professional purposes. There were lads of tender age, sometimes under the care of a pædagogue, and men of middle-age, waiting for the chance of a post. There seems to have been no limit of age, or any compulsion or rule as to the number of courses to be kept. Every student (or his parent) was supposed to select for himself what subjects he should pursue. This was perhaps less mischievous than it would now be, seeing the quadrivium of humanities was so fixed by tradition that most students fell into it as a matter of course. Neither was there in old days that multitude of special subjects, totally unconnected either with each other or with a liberal education, which now infests our educational establishments, and causes the hurry after tangible results to displace the only true outcome of a higher education—that capacity to think consecutively and clearly, which is to be acquired by studying a logical and thoroughly articulated branch of knowledge for the sake of its accuracy and method.
During most of the flourishing age of Hellenistic culture the rhetor was the acknowledged practical teacher; and his course, which occupied several years, with the interruption of the summer holidays, comprised first a careful reading of classical authors, both poetical and prose, with explanations and illustrations. This made the student acquainted with the language and literature of Greece. But it was only introductory to the technical study of expression, of eloquence based on these models, and of accurate writing as a collateral branch of this study. When a man had so perfected himself, he was considered fit for public employment. In the latest times a special knowledge of jurisprudence became more and more necessary for public servants, and was provided for by special schools. We have, unfortunately, no minute description of the precise course of reading adopted by either Sophists or Rhetors, and are therefore confined to this general description. But it is, in our days of hurry and of intellectual compression of subjects, a remarkable thing to contemplate the youth of the civilized world spending four or five years in the mere acquiring of accuracy and elegance of expression after they had learned at school reading, writing, and the elements of science.
§ 83. In this account of ancient university life our attention has been almost exclusively confined to Athens, though there were other seats of education very celebrated, and in much request—Rhodes, Massilia, Tarsus, and, above all, Alexandria. Many Roman nobles preferred sending their sons to Massilia for their education—a Greek town, planted far away from the vices and luxuries of the East. Rhodes maintained its political freedom longer than any other Hellenic settlement, and was famous as a school of rhetoric. Tarsus, from which we know at least one splendid specimen of a student—the Apostle Paul—always had a high and solid reputation for work, and it is very remarkable how the most serious of all the practical systems, the Stoic, is identified with that part of Asia Minor. Afterwards iconoclasm found its cradle there, and thus this land of serious reforms over and over again forced upon the world an earnest view of life.[71] It is worthy of note how constantly the great chairs at Athens were filled by men from these outlying schools; indeed, a native Athenian in the Sophist’s chair was a great rarity. Yet we know so little of the inner life of these remote towns that they cannot now afford us any materials for our inquiry.
§ 84. The case is different with Alexandria, concerning which much has been written and recorded. But, in the first place, it is hardly correct to speak of education in Alexandria as strictly Hellenic, or even Hellenistic. It was the meeting-ground of all the faith and dogma of the old world. The Egyptian, Jewish, and Syrian elements were so strong there that, considering the absence of all old Hellenic traditions in this newest of all Greek-speaking towns, we could hardly use it as a fair specimen of the good and evil in old Greek training. We may add that up to the days of the great theological controversies—days so graphically pictured in Kingsley’s “Hypatia”—we know comparatively little about the students of Alexandria. All our information clusters about the teachers. As we might expect, Alexandria was regarded as the university of progress, the laboratory of positive science, in contrast to the conservative and literary Athens. Nevertheless, even all the sound literary criticism of those days comes from Alexandria. For it is plain that the Ptolemies intended it not as a training-place for youth so much as a home for research, richly endowed with the means and materials for serious study—first of all, an ample library, then handsome buildings, retirements, and adequate endowments. These conceptions, and the success in their execution, are profoundly interesting in the history of education, but are beyond the scope of the present work.